Microsoft Kills Stack Ranking

Nerval's Lobster writes "Microsoft once demanded that its managers place their subordinates on a scale from 'top' to 'poor,' a practice that fueled some epic backstabbing within divisions. Last year, a Microsoft contractor with knowledge of the company's internal review processes told Slashdot that Microsoft was actively working to fix that system; just this week, the company announced that stack ranking was well and truly dead (and that's certainly one way to fix it). 'Lisa Brummel, head of human resources for the company, sent an e-mail to employees notifying them of the change today, according to my contacts,' ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley wrote. According to the memo, there are 'no more ratings,' 'no more curves,' and 'Managers and leaders will have flexibility to allocate rewards in the manner that best reflects the performance of their teams and individuals, as long as they stay within their compensation budget.' They're trying to encourage more teamwork and collaboration throughout the company. As we discussed on Saturday, Yahoo is adopting this method just as Microsoft is abandoning it."

Comments

The old Chair-man is gone

[ArcadeMan]

Maybe Microsoft will be able to re-invent a better version of itself.

Re:"Microsoft abandoning it just as Yahoo is adopt

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a government-owned, contractor-operated lab where we are ranked 1..N, and it's not all that destructive. Why? Because there have been no significant raises in years! So, staff and management wastes months on performance reviews, then the results are put on file and never looked at. The end.